Conference unifix::sailing

How desperate are you? This is the time of the cruising boat spring 
migration north. I was in Bermuda last week and there were several boats
in St George's looking for crew for passages to the northeast US and at 
least one for the Azores and Gibralter. If you're feeling adventurous,
you could fly to Bermuda and start asking. 

    RE:.1
    
    All of our $$ is going into our boat + marriage plans
    for early September.  Day sails in the area would be best
    for us, but thanks for the thought!
    
    Helaine

RE: .2, 

>>>  Day sails in the area would be best for us,....

Daysails are a great way to learn a lot, but are not a substitute for 
offshore experience.  Offshore you often deal with bigger waves, longer 
duration high winds, solving problems without having shelter or a lee to 
run to, seasickness where flat water relief ain't around, and perhaps most
importantly, the psychological sense of real distance from land (and safety),
vulnerability, and necessary independence. 

Admittedly not everyone who has successfully cruised for a year or more
has set off with this kind of experience already behind them, but the
anecdotal evidence strongly indicates that most of those who give it up or
don't make it are those who didn't know what they were really getting into. 

I've sailed my whole life on hundreds of boats, but learned new things 
about voyaging, and about myself, on a round-trip to Bermuda two years ago.  

J.

re .3:

I can only echo John's comments. One of the primary reasons Julie and I
sailed to Bermuda in 1987 (John was one of our crew) was to learn what
offshore sailing is really like. To my dismay, I discovered some aspects
of my inner self that have resulted in reassessing our future sailing plans. 

A year isn't that long, and you could easily spend it sailing along the 
US coast and in the Bahamas without ever making a longer than overnight 
passage. But, if your plans do include extended passages, let me urge 
you to make one or more long passages (eg, Bermuda) before you depart.
Whatever you learn about yourself and sailing will be invaluable. 

    I to have set a goal of sailing to Bermuda in 1991. I intend to
    enage in progressively longer off shore trips. Starting with all
    day sails to overnight passage and then to a 48 hour trip. My crew
    will be my 2 sons, 7 and 12 years old, and my wife. Anything you
    could add, to make me aware of, please respond.

    Our current plans are to spend the summer of 1991 in
    the Great Lakes and then sail down the east coast, taking
    our time, and spending time in such places as Annapolis,
    Virginia Beach area, Hilton Head, etc.  We plan to check
    out the coast of the Carolinas and Florida in search of
    a place to eventually live.  (I'm selling my house before
    we leave and have 2 years to re-invest -- although I'll
    probably get hit heavilly with capital gains as I'd like
    to find much cheaper property down south with little or
    no mortgage).
    
    So, we really do not plan to do much "offshore" sailing --
    just the coast and the islands....I guess the experience
    we want is *crewing together* and learning the ins and outs
    of who does what (putting all our book-learning into
    practice).  As I said in a previous note, my fiance has
    had Great Lakes sailing experience since 1972, but I'm the
    one who needs to "get my feet wet"!  
    
    Helaine

re .6:

Ah so. Sounds interesting. I'd quite like to sail on Lake Superior. A
question if I may. How will you get your boat from NH to the Great Lakes
and back? If you plan to spend the summer of 1991 sailing on the Great
Lakes and then sail along the eastern US coast, I think you might have a
time problem unless you're planning on trucking your boat from the Great
Lakes to the East Coast (which isn't inexpensive). Given the autumn
weather and from what I've been told by people who've cruised the East
Coast, you should be headed south from New England by the end of
September. It is some 1500 miles from the Great Lakes to Boston via the
St Lawrence Seaway and I don't know how many from Lake Eire to NYC via
the Eire Canal and the Hudson River (which would require unstepping the
masts). 

    We are considering trucking the boat to Lake Ontario and sailing
    west through the Welland Canal (no un-stepping the mast) to spend
    a couple of months on Lake Erie (Buffalo area).  We estimate
    approximately $600-1,000 trucking fee.
    
    Late summer we would like to go through the Erie Barge Canal
    we believe approximately 500-700 miles to New York.
    
    If anyone has any more detailed first-hand information regarding
    the above estimates, we would love to hear it.
    
    Helaine

RE: .6,

Sounds like a fascinating trip.  Alan's questions are good ones; the Erie 
may have a draft limit in certain places, too.  

Your fiance may already be well aware of these points, but:

1)  Salt water blows up and behaves differently from fresh water.  Great 
Lakes waves are definitely shorter and steeper, but ocean waves carry more 
power due both to their greater density (therefore, inertia) and because 
they tend to be bigger before breaking.  The wave face angles aren't as 
great, but the crests tend to be higher.  This has its own catalog of 
effects on the sailor.  (For instance, nearly every ocean sailor has
experienced dropping so deeply into a trough that they lose the wind--for
5-10 seconds.  The boat stands upright, just in time to be lifted into the 
unobstructed gale.  Over and over again....)

2)  Study the coastal chartS (not *the* coastal chart--too little detail)
to well understand where your vulnerable passages will be.  The various
bays and sounds will provide quite a bit of shelter, including inside the
barrier islands of NC and along the ICW in Fla-di-dah.  But along NJ from
Sandy Hook to Cape May, outside the Delmarva peninsula if you go that
route, and sections of the NC-SC-GA coast offer little shelter, and in the
last case, deceptively tricky entrances.  (In 1978, with 20 kt following
breeze, we directed ourselves with a 1976 chart into a cut shown to be 8'
deep; it was perhaps a half-mile distant from where shown on the charts,
and less than 4' deep, with a 6' standing wave to greet us at the entrance 
as we had to work against the outgoing tide.  Good thing we weren't
depending on Loran for perfect positioning, and drew only 2' with board
up, and had a both dependable and capable Armstrong auxiliary.) 

From around NYC to Key West, the chart numbers are 12300, 12200, 11520,
11480, 11460 for starters.  You'll want greater detail for actually
navigating, but these will show you a lot more than the bigger ones (13003
and 11009) and might be the best choice for an offshore leg if you decide
to do one. 

J.

    On the canal from Buffalo to Albany you will have to drop the mast.
    This is the old barge canal, with many bridges quite low, Head ducking.
    Once you get to Albany, you will have to switch to the truck route
    again.

    To the best of my knowledge, there are three ways out of (or into)
    the Great Lakes by water...first is through the St. Lawrence Seaway
    to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  The second is through the Illinois
    River (albeit with a shallow draft boat) from Chicago to the
    Mississippi (if there's another drought like last summer's, make
    that a *very* shallow draft boat).  And, the third is via Governor
    Clinton's Erie Barge Canal.  The canal runs approximately 250 miles
    from Lockport on Lake Erie to the Mohawk/Hudson Rivers North of
    Albany.
    
    Bruce and I tentatively plan to have the boat trucked to Lake
    Ontario thereby saving time, one set of mast steppings, and one
    trip through the canal (Bruce says he only wants to experience it
    once).  We will sail the length of Ontario to St. Catharines which
    is the north entrance to the Welland Canal.  It won't be necessary
    for us to unstep the masts here as the Welland was designed for
    lake freighters having a bit more freeboard than Northern Light.
    
    Our intent is to summer on Lake Erie with Bruce's family and begin
    our trip south in the early fall via the Barge Canal.  It really
    isn't necessary to travel the entire distance from Lake Erie to
    the Hudson on the Erie Canal (which runs approximately parallel
    to Interstate 90).  A northern entrance exists at Oswego on Lake
    Ontario.  Initiating the canal portion of the trip here would
    probably cut the time spent on the canal in half.
    
    Unfortunately, this plan may become an abortive exercise, as recent
    pressure has been put on the State of New York to eliminate funds
    set aside for the upkeep of the canal.  It has no commercial value
    save for a handful of tourists and pleasure boats that visit it
    every summer.  We can only hope it will still be there when we're
    ready to go through.
    
    If we pull this off, we figure it means hauling the boat one way
    to Ontario, putting the sticks up twice, and taking them down once.
    
    If anyone out there has any more specific information on the canal,
    i.e., cost of locking through, places to gas up, time constraints,
    etc., or knows of someone who's done it in real life, please let
    us know as we are great listeners!!
    
    Helaine
    
    P.S.  Someone mentioned in a previous note that shoals exist in
    Lake Erie.  The average depth of the lake is (I believe) between
    50-80 feet deep, and no shoals exist that I know of save for a few
    areas around the Erie Islands near Sandusky.  The Eastern shore
    is basically a mixture of slate and sandstone rock cliffs separated
    by sand beaches and industrial complexes.  Because of the prevailing
    westerlies, this is the lee side of the lake and it can get quire
    hairy as there are few holes to duck into if the weather goes
    sour.  A few spots, most notably the peninsulas of land that jut
    out from Erie PA (which could be a beautiful small boat harbor if
    the people at the EYC weren't such snobs [my fiance's feeling here])
    and Long Point due north on the Canadian side are by far the most
    hazardous obstructions on the eastern end of the lake (omitting,
    of course, Niagara Falls, which technically isn't an obstruction,
    unless you're headed the other way :-)  Uninhabited at their extremes,
    these sandy promontories are invisible at night, and can catch you
    by surprise if you're dozing.

HAving spent several years running a charter sailboat between Detroit and the
Erie Islands- mostly the winery on Middle Bass, I got to know the bottom depth
well- the deepest hole in Lake Erie is 66ft, the average depth is about 35.

Lake Erie can exhibit a very unusual phonemon called a Schcie (sp?) Since the
lake is shallow and just over 300 miles long, in an East-West direction it
can get a high pressure at one end and a low at the other, causing the water to
'slosh' from end to end. The record shift caused a 6 ft drop at Toledo in about
20 minutes, then sloshed back and forth at about a 30 min period for about 10
hours. MOre commonly shifts of 12-18" occur. These were often called 'wind tides'

Ive always wanted to make the Erie Cannal trip. Someday...